1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus connected to a general-purpose bus provided in another image processing apparatus, and to an image processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital composite apparatuses having a scanning function, a printer function, a copying function, a facsimile function, a network function and the like have been known. Such a digital composite apparatus incorporates a dedicated controller for controlling and managing respective functional operations. The controller incorporates an image processing unit, an image memory and the like, and can perform various types of image processing for image data input from a scanner unit or a network, and output resultant data.
Conventionally, an image read by a scanner unit, a raster image to be output to a printer unit, or an image received via a network is processed in units of a page. Accordingly, it is necessary to secure spaces in units of a page in an image memory. When performing processing for an image in units of a page, since resources, such as an image processing unit and the like, are occupied until the processing is terminated, it is difficult to perform a plurality of sets of processing simultaneously and at a high speed.
Recently, controllers have been proposed in which image data for one page is divided into data having a size to allow easy processing in parallel, and processing is performed in units of divided image data. In such a controller, since the ratio of occupation of each resource can be minimized, simultaneous execution of a plurality of sets of processing becomes easier. In addition, processing can be performed at a high speed. However, in order to realize processing by dividing image data, processing for dividing image data in units of a page must be performed. It is also necessary to manage divided image data. Such image dividing processing, management of divided image data, and the like can be performed by software executed by a CPU (central processing unit) of the controller.
However, if the amount of image data is large, a considerable time is required for such operations, resulting in an increase in the load for the CPU of the controller, and incapability of performing high-speed processing.